The Tall Men (The Classic Film Collection) Page 8

  She looked up quickly, studying the shadow of quizzical soberness crinkling his eye corners.

  “I knew you’d be back sometime this winter,” she smiled. “Help me off with this coat and get out of my way.”

  He took off the coat, moved back out of her way and shouldered off his own. By now the place was toasting up warm and proper. While she spitted the meat and began to broil it over the flames, he dropped to his haunches, eased back against the warming clay of the wall with a contented sigh. Presently, he shifted his glance from the girl, surveyed, with a growing sense of restful satisfaction, the cozy interior of their Arkansas boudoir.

  The cave was perhaps twenty feet wide and seven or eight high at its outer opening within which the black stood dozing. It narrowed to no more than six feet where he had built the fire and where the girl was now tending the mulemeat. Back of the fire it opened out again into a regular room, small, about ten-by-ten, and very low ceilinged, maybe no more than four or five feet. Its floor was of clean, dry river sand, the red clay of its walls showing no hint of seepage or dampness. The backflung heat of the fire fed snugly into it, while what little smoke there was worked its way along the higher slope of the outer opening to dissipate itself among the wind and the willows beyond.

  Ben brought his eyes back to the girl by the fire. He nodded to the growing, drowsy warmth of the cavern and to the sizzling, crisp burning aroma of the mulemeat. About now a man could look up to old Ka-dih and mutter a word or two in what little he remembered of Kwahadi, by way of belated thanks.

  Ben did so now. But the offering was not limited entirely by the brevity of his Comanche vocabulary.

  He had never seen Nella Torneau out of the bulk and clumsy bundle of the trapper’s coat. He was seeing her out of it now. The prospect put Ka-dih and the cave and the crisping mulemeat as far from a man’s mind as the last star out.

  She was dressed, not in emigrant homespun or frontier linsey-woolsey, nor yet in prairie fringe and buckskin, but in a soft checkered, settlement calico of cool green and pale tan. Under the dainty ankle length of the city frock’s hem, the crude cowhide farmer’s boots bulked large and ludicrous. But also appearing below that Sunday-go-to-meeting hem was something neither oversize nor out of place—the slim, trim, frothy frill of a lace petticoat.

  But even the airy undergarment could not keep a man’s eyes long off of what it was clinging to.

  The girl, for all her gauntness and spring willow tallness, had a body under that calico print. And that body was anything but underweight.

  The way she was kneeling to the fire, quartering away from him only enough to be unaware of his watching her, and the soft, clean calico tightening over her breasts and buttocks as she moved, while the shifting light of the fire caught and highlined every curving line of her, made a man think about something far removed from getting to Bent’s Fort tomorrow.

  She looked over at him, dark hair mussed and tumbled from the removal of the fox fur parka, face flushed, eyes squinted and frowning against the heat and smoke of the fire. If she had caught him staring at her, she gave no sign of it. She brushed back the loose forelock of curls, waved the smoking chunk of mulemeat toward him. “Come and get it, mister.” She broke out the swift, sharp smile. “Before I throw it to the woodpeckers!” With the gesture and the smile, came the low laugh, the clean white teeth flashing behind it.

  Suddenly, Ben laughed too. It sounded strange even to him. A man couldn’t remember the last time he had done that. Laughed like that. But then, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been happy, either. “Don’t throw it, ma’am,” he grinned. “I’m on my way.”

  She looked at him as he came to her side and took the willow stick. “Mister,” she said slowly, “you laughed. I never allowed you could.”

  “Miss Nella,” he smiled, settling back against the wall and unsheathing the Kwahadi knife, “I done it and I’m glad.”

  She came to him, sitting crosslegged beside him, so close the tumbling hair brushed his shoulder.

  “Mister,” she repeated, holding his eyes through the little pause, her voice so low he barely heard it above the sudden hammer of his heart, “so am I!”

  He banked the fire, building the sand of the cavern floor carefully around its base, covering its coals with heavy drift chunks and with snow brought from outside the entrance. The wetted wood simmered, settled into the glowing firebed. Watching it a moment, he nodded. It would dry out and burn down through the night, leaving a live heart of coals for morning and keeping, the back cave toast-warm, meantime.

  The thought of the back cave made him restless.

  The girl was taking a long time. A man wanted to give her all the time she needed to get herself decently bedded down and covered up before he came in and rolled into his own blankets. He had figured she would want to undress with the cave so warm and dry and with her probably not having been out of her clothes for the best part of a week. But there was a limit to a man’s patience once he was thawed out and full of roast mule and the godblessed peace and quiet of the place. And warmed through, too, in a way no fire could do it, with how she had looked at him and told him she was glad he had laughed.

  He shook off the last thought, knowing from long experience how lonely people in a common tight, and shut off from all else, naturally drew to one another, meaning nothing by it that wouldn’t dry up the minute they were back where others were around them.

  No, the girl had meant nothing by the look and the words, nothing except that she was glad they were alive and safe and had each other to talk to. That was all, there wasn’t any more. He’d go in there shortly, sleep the storm away, get up in the morning, take her on into Bent’s Fort and never see her again. She’d forget him before he was out of sight down the south trail, would go on following her own hardeyed way wherever she was letting it take her, and never think again of a lonely Texas boy named Ben Allison.

  He tried to shake off that thought, too. Tried to make himself think he’d forget her just as quick, maybe quicker. He had a one-third piece of something bigger than anything most men even dreamed of. His next year’s work and the bright trail of the years past that were laid out ahead of him. He had plenty to do, little enough time to do it in. He had to forget that girl and he would.

  The high resolve held just long enough for her voice to melt it away. “All right, mister. I’m ready if you are. Bed’s made and turned down.”

  He felt awkward now. Like he was about to walk into a strange girl’s bedroom. And that she’d be afraid of him and what he was thinking and what he might try to do.

  “Reckon I’ll set outside here a spell,” he muttered hoarsely. “Fire’s goin’ to need watchin’ till she banks down and settles in. You go on to sleep, I’ll be along shortly.”

  He thought he heard the low bubble of the laugh, but wasn’t sure. “Come along now, boy. Don’t be bashful,” she called softly. “I’m all tucked in.” She added the last like she knew he would want to be sure she was.

  “All right,” said Ben, feeling himself tremble all over with the word. “You got your coat in there? I’m goin’ to throw mine over the hoss.”

  “I’ve got it,” said the girl. “Come along in and tell me goodnight. I’m like to float right away for being that drowsy—”

  He came away from the black and was ducking through the inner opening then, crouching over to fit his six feet four under the low curve of the ceiling. A moment later his eyes were adjusting to the reflected glow of the fire’s shadows.

  Beyond him, he saw the dim-lit warmth of the little room—and within it, the waiting, single bed of the wolfskin coat and her carefully tucked blankets. He felt the thick-lashed, sleep-lidded impact of her strange blue-violet eyes, sensed in them a primitive pleading that put the dark blood drumming in his ears. He heard, muffled and faint and wordless, the murmur of her husky voice.

  She reached a slender arm, bare to the rounded shoulder, from beneath the blankets. She did not take her slanted eyes from
his, as the reaching hand sought and found his corner of the bedding. The full lips fell apart and waited there, wide and warm and hungrily beckoning in the half darkness. Her eyes still holding his, the slim hand moved suddenly downward, bringing the blanket back and away from his side of the bed—and startlingly back and away from a part of hers.

  Beneath the turned back cover, wickedly naked upon the deep, rich pile of the wolfskins beneath it, he saw the long, slow movement of the sinuous, rose-pink body.

  “Tell me goodnight!” she whispered fiercely. Then, strangely soft, shadowed with loneliness, haunted with desperate longing—”

  “And tell me that you love me!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ben awoke slowly, mind groping back from a long, happy way off.

  When a man has just put under eight hours of the first solid sleep he’s had in three days, his thoughts don’t jump open quite as fast as his eyes. But the smell of roast meat and a driftwood fire are familiar prods to a plainsman’s memory. He rolled up on one elbow, seeing the empty bed at his side, hearing at the same time the sounds of the girl moving around outside. By the time he got into his clothes and stumbled sleepily through the low entrance, things were coming back to him with a rush.

  He was given no chance to put them into grateful words.

  “Fetch out my coat, please.” The nod was civil and no more than civil. “And bundle up the bedroll. Your meat’s by the fire, yonder.”

  He looked at her a moment, wanting to say a hundred things, not able to think of any one of them.

  He went back into the cave, got her coat, rolled the blankets. He was back out at once, determined now to have his say and get it off his mind.

  Again, he had no chance.

  Nella was throwing the forty-pound saddle on the black, making no more of the effort than would any knowing hand. “You eat, pardner,” she ordered. “I’ll lace on the blankets.”

  Ben sat down against the wall, confused, upset, wondering: beginning, too, to get a little riled. He ate the mulemeat, saying nothing, thinking much.

  Well, if she didn’t want to talk about it, a man could allow that figured, somehow. Maybe she was a mite upset for her own part. Maybe she was feeling the same as him, not knowing any better than he did how to put it to words. Let it be for now. It would come out soon enough.

  It was a wise idea and a bad guess.

  The miles marched along under the gelding’s long stride. Nothing but Smalltalk about the clearing weather and the remaining distance to the fort interrupted their swift passage. With the morning well gone and Bent’s crowded post lying hard around the near bend of the Arkansas, Ben could stand it no longer.

  “Nella,” he grunted over his shoulder, “ain’t we got suthin’ better to talk about than what happened to the snowstorm?”

  There was silence for the next fifty feet of trail. Then her voice came clearly enough. “Ben,” she said deliberately, “just forget it.”

  It was the first time she had used his name. Hearing her say it aroused a whole new flood of thoughts in him, all of them rising around that wonderful hour in the cave. “That’s a outsize order for a ranch boy,” he said doubtfully. “Mebbe you kin answer it better than me.”

  “I can,” said Nella.

  Her voice wasn’t hard now; still there was no hesitation in it.

  “A woman’s lonely and grateful and maybe a little scared and feeling bad-lost into the bargain. There’s a fire and warmth and the first shelter and safety she’s felt in might be a long time. Add a few kind words from a decent, clean-thinking man and you’ve got what happened last night.”

  “That all you got, Nella?” He said it quietly, trying to keep it level and easy. The girl didn’t miss the rough catch of the hurt in it.

  “It’s all, Ben,” she answered softly. “A woman like me’s got only one way to pay a man she’s beholden to.”

  “You wasn’t beholden to me for nothin’ at all. And you wasn’t payin’ me last night. Not no more than you was payin’ yourse’f, you hear?”

  “I hear, Ben, but I’m not listening anymore. Forget it like I said. There’s no good in it for either of us. Believe me, boy, I’ve been there before.”

  “I ain’t,” frowned Ben. “I ain’t never been there like that before. It don’t make for easy forgettin’, you hear me now?” He paused, reining the black in. He twisted in the saddle. “Nella,” the name slipped out as easily by this time as though he’d been saying it all his life, “I want you to stick by me. I reckon I need you more’n any man ever needed anythin’. How about it, girl?”

  He saw the shadow darken the violet eyes. Then saw it as swiftly disappear behind the dazzle of the bright, hard smile.

  “Ben, are you proposing to me?”

  “I reckon,” he stammered, blushing hard. “Leastways, the best I know how. Will you have me, Nella?”

  The smile went the way of the shadow in the eyes, fading swiftly.

  “I’ve had you, Ben,” she said slowly.

  “Meanin’ you don’t want no more of me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Say what you mean, then. Straight talk walks the shortest distance.”

  She looked at him, shrugging helplessly. “All right, Ben, move the horse along. It’s cold here in the wind.”

  He turned away from her, kneed the gelding, held him down to a chop step as Nella talked. They were only a short distance from the fort now. But it was only a short story she told him. Short, and not quite sweet.

  When she finished, he let the silence grow for a long time. When his answer came at last, it was filled with all the child gentleness he had shown her the night before. Riding with his back to her, he could not see the return of the quick shadow to her eyes.

  “I don’t care where you been, Nella. Or what you been. Nor where you was goin’, or aimin’ to keep on bein’ once you’d got there. A woman’s got to live, same as a man. We ain’t no different, you and me, in the ways we’ve went about it.”

  Quickly, then, he told her of his own past, softening nothing and concluding abruptly. “We both picked the easy way and found it harder than the hubs of hell. It ain’t no sign we got to keep runnin’ on dry axles. A month ago, up in Montana, I took a new trail. Mebbe it’ll lead me summers, mebbe it won’t. But it’s a chance, girl, the best I’ve been give. I’m askin’ you to take it with me. To leave me split it with you, fifty-fifty. And nobody askin’ no questions about nothin’, from here on out. What you say?”

  “I say keep the horse moving,” said Nella Torneau huskily. “You were headed south when we met, me, north.”

  “Don’t riddle me none,” pleaded Ben earnestly. “I want a straight answer.”

  “You’ve got it, boy.” The quickness and the sharpness were back in the low voice. “I’m still heading north."

  The week at the fort passed. On the good, handcut winter hay and eastern rolled oats, there available, the gaunted horses rounded out quickly. With the morning of the eighth day they were ready to travel.

  Throughout the preceding days, Nella had not weakened to Ben’s increasingly hesitant persuasions. She insisted she would stay at the fort, continue her original way north with the first arriving of the spring emigrant outfits. She refused to wait for him until he returned with the herd, or to travel on with him and Clint and Stark to Fort Worth. He made his last, fumbling plea the night before the start, came away downcast and carrying a weight of heartsink and loneliness that kept him tossing till daybreak. He had seen Nathan Stark approach the girl shortly after he left her, thought nothing of it except to tell himself, of a sudden, that he didn’t want any man around her but himself. That was a small idea and he knew it. He had it pretty well fought down by first light, too. But the thought of leaving Nella was still hard and heavy inside him when the sun rolled up the long valley of the Arkansas.

  Within ten minutes after it did, he knew he was not going to leave her. Not then, and not ever.

  He walked away from the bl
ack, leaving him half saddled and whickering curiously, went straight to the post sutler’s store where she had been staying. He was in time to see her and Stark come out of her quarters, laughing and talking.

  Fighting down the black anger that rode up in him, knowing it wasn’t really black, but green, he waited until Stark left to see to his own preparations for departure. He stood awkwardly before her, not answering either her cheery good morning or the familiar, too bright smile that came with it.

  “Nella,” he blurted out, “I ain’t leavin’ you.”

  “Bad news sure travels fast!” She surprised him with her quick sarcasm. “How’d you know?”

  He started to answer, suddenly realized what she had said. He had meant to tell her he was leaving Stark and Clint, giving up his share in the herd. Would go and gladly go, with her, wherever the trail might lead, north or south.

  Instead, he stepped back, eying her uncertainly.

  “I don’t get you, Nella,” he muttered.

  “That’s right, Ben, you don’t.” The smile brightened unbearably. “Mr. Stark does.”

  Ben’s jaw set, bad and hard.

  “Now don’t get up on your back feet and start waving your paws around like a damn bear,” she laughed. “I’m only agreeing with you, boy. Like you said, you’re not leaving me. I’m goin’ with you.”

  “I’m right glad, Nella.” He said it simply. He wanted to shout for joy, but Stark was sticking in his mind, stopping him. “What’s Stark to do with it?” he tailed off bluntly.

  “He talked me into it,” shrugged Nella carelessly. “Offered me a job I can get by on, that’s all.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Not the kind you’re thinking,” she said easily. “A good job.”

  “Sech as?”

  “Dealing faro. Some saloon up to Virginia City. Black Nugget or something like that. It won’t be the first girl that’s tried it, you know. Stark reckons the boys’ll give my table a big play” her tone turned defensive, “and besides, he paid me in advance!”